>> a pleasure to be with you. >> a great ride. thank you for your help. >> ken burns starting tomorrow night and wednesday night on and now why democrats like a commitment phobic guy find it harder to talk about what they believe in. that's my line, ladies and gentlemen. here is rachel maddow. good evening. >> did you say commitment phobic? >> commitment phobic guy, i did. >> sure enough. wanted to have that for the record. thank you. >> what did you think i said? >> i just didn't want -- i didn't want to have it end up where you said something totally different and i invented that. >> like the french justice department minister? >> oh, the giggly guy? >> no, no, no, the woman who didn't say -- meant to say inflation but didn't say inflation. >> oh, yeah. that was -- that was one of those ones i saw the headline and couldn't breathe any further. i got verklempt for the rest of the day. >> me, too. >> thank you, keith. thanks to you at home for staying with us for the next hour. for the next hour in which we shall celebrate the launch of lawrence o'donnell's new show

which is tonight right after this hour. we shall celebrate the arrival of our new desk which inexplicably has something to do with the start of lawrence's new show with you i'm not sure what. i'm very excite body my new desk. we shall also celebrate the return of barack hussein obama. he is back in talking points just in case any republicans previous efforts to convince you he is secretly foreign did not work on you, they're going to give it one more shot. that's all to come over the course of the hour. but we begin tonight by putting a giant asterisk on the well worn political truism that all politics is local. the big decision democrats had to make about this year's elections was whether or not they would try to run this year's elections as a national campaign, whether they were going to try to run as democrats versus republicans or whether they were going to try to block out everything happening at the national level and, instead, hope that each individual congressional and senate and governor's race would just be viewed as an individual candidate being judged on a

local basis. republicans, of course, had the same choice. they made their decision very early on. republicans decided as a party to run a national anti-obama campaign for this year's elections. the elections for them are a referendum on president obama. every single republican in the country is running a mini campaign for president with barack obama as his or her opponent. democrats had the opportunity to counter that. they could have said, oh, yeah, you want to run against president obama? great. let's contrast him with you. let's contrast him with what you are offering. democrats could have approached the election in a national way like that. but they've decided not to. they have decided on another strategy. republicans are running national campaigns. democrats are running local campaigns. here is what that looked like. up in alaska the surprise nominee for the senate is tea party favorite joe miller. if you go to joe miller's campaign website right now,

here's what you'll find. right at the top of the page there is a big banner that reads alaskans endorse joe miller. right next to alaskans endorse joe miller you will see images of decidedly non-alaskans. non-alaskan national conservatives. former presidential candidate mike huckabee, laura ingraham. if you click on endorse joe miller banner you find all sorts of endorsements again from people who are not at all alaskans. non-alaskan national conservatives. the first endorsement on the alaskans endorse joe miller page is minnesota congresswoman michelle bachman. the second is from the national conservative group freedom works. the next one is an actual alaskan, hooray, but most of the rest of the page is full of groups like the club for growth or conservative commentators like martha zoeller or eric erickson. in alaska joe miller is running a decidedly national campaign.

he is touting all of these endorsements he's gotten from national conservative figures. he just puts them all under a banner that calls them alaskans. who cares? the democrat in the race, scott mcadams, he just released his first campaign ad. see if you can notice the difference in strategy. >> this is a long way from d.c. i'm scott mcadams and i'm not your usual senate candidate. i grew up in petersberg, was a deck hand in the behring sea, married up. i've been a teacher, a mayor, and a dad. here's the difference between me, joe and lisa. they think this campaign is all about them. i think it's about alaska. getting our fair share. i approved this message because after you've been cursed at in the region, you can take on anyone. >> did you catch the tag line there? it's about alaska. that's essentially his slogan. it's about alaska. local, local, local. that's how the democrat scott mcadams is running in alaska. now on the front page of joe

miller's website the campaign is touting a recent national media interview that he did with neal cavuto, host on fox news. scott mcadams on the other hand is touting this video on his website and it's just about as local as you can get. we got yard signs! now this may reflect the resources available and the personalities and political preferences of these two candidates, but this is also evidence of the way the democrats on the national level have decided to run this year. it's true wildly different campaigns.

in the alaska race scott mcadams is a huge underdog against republican joe miller and probably even against the potential write-in candidacy of lisa murkowski. even in delaware chris coons is in a totally different race with totally different expectations but the campaigns look pretty much exactly the same. here is what it looks like on the republican side in delaware. you have republican candidate christine o'donnell just like joe miller touting the endorsements of, again, all sorts of national conservatives. people like south carolina senator jim demint. former alaska governor sarah palin, the conservative organization the family research council which is based, i think, in michigan and in washington, d.c. also there's conservative commentator eric erickson again who, as best i can tell, lives on cnn. during the republican primary -- look at this. this is the breakdown of where christine o'donnell got her money from. 85% roughly of her itemized campaign contributions came from not delaware.

only about 15% of her campaign cash came from people who might even consider being able to legally vote for her some day because they live in delaware. as we reported on our website if you go to teamchristine2010.com which appears to be loosely with it, they have affinity groups. affinity groups by state and by foreign country. texas for christine. colorado for christine. new jersey for christine. kansas for christine. there's even an italy for christine. where people can be for christine and give her money but they can't legally vote for her no matter how much they might want to. christine o'donnell is not running a delaware campaign. she is running national, even international help christine o'donnell get elected campaign. the democrat, on the other hand, is running this type of campaign. >> six years ago new castle county government was a mess of corruption and out of control spending.

then chris coons took over. today new castle county has a aaa bond rating. now chris coons is running for senate because we need new, responsible leadership in washington. chris coons. >> local but delaware is a very tiny state. it only has three-county. new castle is by far the biggest one. still local, right? local. definitely not a national ad. midterm elections are not defined by one big race by definition, right? it's district by district, state by state, candidate by candidate. each has made a decision here. republicans are running nationally. democrats are running locally. which is why even if you have never heard of scott mcadams you sure as heck have heard of joe miller. it is quite possible you have never heard of chris coons but have heard of christine o'donnell. even if you only get your news from "saturday night live" -- i do not raise this issue in order to quibble with all politics as local truism but that quote was supposedly coined by former

democratic house speaker tip o'neill in the 1930s. and while i do not want to get at anyone's exact ages i am thinking that's a time reasonably predates, say, bill o'reilly. earlier this month the democratic governor's association filed an elections complaint against fox news after mr. o'reilly directed his viewers to the fund-raising campaign website of republican gubernatorial candidate kasich. kasich made his pitch to fox viewers. conservative candidates can do with the national fund-raising platform that is fox news right now qualitatively changes the game about whether candidates can compete by running purely local races. the national conservative fund-raising and softball publicity forum that did not exist before changes the rationale calculus of how to campaign and how to win for conservative candidates it ends up being politically rational to run away from their own local media and only cultivate what they can get at the more than friendly national level.

and when i say run away from their local media, i mean literally run away from local media. >> will you answer some questions really quickly? >> i'm sorry. >> so you don't have anything to say dean's comments? no answer from angle. sharron you don't have any -- >> we're running behind. i'm sorry. >> sharron angle running away from karen griffin, a local reporter for the tv station krnv in reno, nevada. the same thing of course happened in delaware. christine o'donnell's campaign turns away local reporters for delaware's news journal at a recent event but let national reporters from "the wall street journal" and "new york times" in. the strategy here is clear. democrats may have felt like they had the luxury of choosing whether or not to run local campaigns or national campaigns for this year's elections but top tier republicans are not bothering to compete on the local level anymore.

they don't have to. >> miss o'donnell could be on here tonight, could be presenting herself in front of the nation. her people don't want her to be. >> she is going to have to dismiss that, go with her gut, get out there, speak to the american people, speak through fox news. >> i'm going on bill o'reilly the 16th. his audience is friendly, and if i can get an opportunity to say that at least once on his show, when i said it on sean hannity's television show, we made $40,000 before we even got out of the studio in new york. >> we made 40 grand before we even got out of the studio in new york. doing mr. hannity's show. republican candidates should speak through fox news. that is the advice they are giving each other because they have seen its effect firsthand. republicans should be raising money through fox news. that's what they're telling each other. what happens to them?

democrats and republicans are operating in a media landscape that we have never had before in this country. we have never before had a television network designed to raise money for the candidates of one party. and because of that all politics are not local anymore. democrats are still trying to play that old game. republicans are not. and here is what the impact of that looks like. here is christine o'donnell's campaign website right now. after raising a huge chunk of her primary money from out of state after team christine has managed to mobilize all these out of state and out of country supporters, after her fox news only media strategy, look at her fund-raising goal right now. $2.5 million, as you can see. she has already surpassed that. she has already brought in $2.6 million. now let's look at her opponent's website. chris coons. democrat chris coons running in delaware trying to appeal to people who will actually be able to vote for him because he lives in delaware. his goal, $250,000. 1/10. 1/10 of what christine

o'donnell's raising. used to be it made sense to pick a local strategy for a candidate with strong local credentials. now if that candidate is a democrat, swamped. swamped by national conservative money. if democrats are not messaging and trying to compete at a national level simply in order to raise money, it does not matter how good their messaging is locally. they will get buried in conservative money. buried in national conservative money that they raise nationally and have no shame about. all politics used to be local. democrats want it to still be local. those times have passed. this year democrats compete nationally or they do not compete at all. or 60 to 0? [ tires screech ] the quarter-mile, or a quarter-century? is performance about the joy of driving? or the importance... of surviving? to us, performance is not about doing one thing well.

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it will be the year 2040 and they will ask us why didn't democrats force republicans to vote on the bush tax cuts because, dude, the 99 gazillion dollar deficit really sucks.

coming up with msnbc's lawrence o'donnell. decadently delicious. 60 calories. it's finally me o'clock. time for jell-o. try new chocolate mint sensation. big oil and their backers are spending millions to scare us. saying it costs too much to break our dependence on oil. what they're really doing is putting our security at risk. my big brother went to iraq to keep us safe. he came home in a flag-draped coffin. america lost another hero. big oil wants to talk about costs? don't let big oil lie to you about what our dependence really costs.

we can't have that serious conversation until we lay out the size of the problem. once americans understand how big the problem is, then we can begin to talk about potential solutions. but i am committed to having that adult conversation with the american people because it is important for the future of our kids and our grandkids. >> forgive me, sir. isn't the right time too much the adult conversation now before the election when you have this document? why not make a single proposal to cut social security, medicare, medicaid?

>> chris, this is what happens here in washington. when you start down that path, you just invite all kinds of problems. i know. i've been there. i think we need to do this in a more systemic way and have this conversation first. let's not get to the potential solutions. >> will the house hold a vote this week before you adjourn for a month of campaigning, a vote this week on whether or not to extend the bush tax cuts? >> i doubt that we will. >> and there's your party strategies for this year's elections in a nutshell. republicans promising that they're not really ready to talk about, you know, policy and stuff. solutions. it's very complicated. democrats offered the softest of all political targets, nevertheless are refusing to campaign against republicans. tada. joining us now is my friend lawrence o'donnell, his show premieres right after this show tonight at 10:00 eastern. thanks for your time. >> good to be here. >> i know -- >> i thought i would drop by. >> nothing to do.

what did joe biden -- i know you have him on your debut show tonight. what did he tell you when you asked him about democrats not forcing republicans to vote? >> we pretaped him earlier tonight and surprisingly he accepts the judgment of the congressional leadership on the question of when to go to the vote on the tax issue. it's a tough call. i can see it either way. i understand the strategy of not going forward. i understand the strategy of going for it. a really tough call. democrats believe they always lose the tax debate with republicans, that the only -- what the public hears is republicans want to cut taxes more than democrats and the swing voter doesn't really care about any of the details beyond that. >> and the deficit stuff doesn't resonate at all? >> it isn't resonating yet in the polling the democrats have on their races and on what their candidates need. the way this was decided in the senate, i've been told by senators who actually wanted to

go for a vote now, what happened is that the democratic senators who are up for re-election right now were given the power to decide whether we should have this vote in the senate before the election or after the election and they overwhelmingly chose don't make us go to the senate floor during my re-election campaign, please. >> we don't want to run against republicans. we prefer to pretend we're running against viruses. we'd like to make up some sort of hypothetical thing we're running against that we're more comfortable running against rather than republicans. that's what it feels like to me. >> they just simply don't believe they can win the tax argument with republicans in a campaign season. >> but they're not trying to win any arguments. >> they're going local like you said and that is the tip o'neill commandment all politics is local, go local. in 1994 when the democrats lost everything and they lost the house for the first time in 40 years, every commercial that was run against the democrat who lost was the same commercial. it was a picture of your local

congressman, the democrat, over 30 seconds morphed into the face of bill clinton. and that was the campaign that destroyed the democrats in the house. they nationalized it around the president. democrats did that, nationalizing the congressional election around george w. bush in 2006 and so the counter strategy to that has always been get them to go local and, by the way, go negative. go against the individual candidate. don't try to get into this national debate because we will lose the national debate. republicans did the same thing. in 2006 when the democrats went after them nationally with george w. bush they changed the subject. they tried to change the subject to local. >> isn't the other way to run against that, all right, you want to talk national, let's compare what barack obama's offering to what you're offering, joe miller in alaska. if republicans are trying to set

the script, shouldn't democrats recognize that they shouldn't accept that framing and do what the republicans don't want them to do? >> when we recall that this only matters in the swing districts, most of these are settled. the outcome is settled. it's been settled for a year. there's no contest. in the swing districts the democratic accomplishments are not popular. the obama democrat health care bill has never had the majority of support in the swing districts. so the democrat doesn't want to talk about the health care bill or wants to say, hey, i voted against it and the republicans love talking about the health care bill and so that's -- >> the democrats end up running by not running. maybe i'll get some votes by accident. >> where the democrats don't need it to be popular. in nancy pelosi's district, it's popular. in those swing districts with voters who can go either way, the democrats are not finding that they have an accomplishment package to sell. >> and they're certainly not trying. lawrence o'donnell, i am so

looking forward to "the last word." >> they're scared. they're terrified. >> when you are terrified about losing, you can either try to win or accept that you are going to lose and refuse to campaign. they're doing the latter which makes me nuts. at least it makes sense to you. >> i understand. i understand terror, yeah. >> that's why you have "the last word." which starts tonight. >> which starts -- do i look scared? it starts in minutes. >> you are ready. >> i wish the tech rehearsals worked. the great thing about live tv, anything can go wrong. the chances of that are going to skyrocket. >> you're going to try to juggle something? >> so many things could go wrong. >> break a leg, my friend. lawrence o'donnell's new show starts tonight at the end of this hour, top of the hour. we're all very excited about it it here at msnbc. do you ever pine for the good old days like before we had child labor laws? before we had weekends? if so, i have the candidate for you. put the gruel on simmer. my nasal allergies are ruining our camping trip.

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there's a way to do populism in politics. there's the way john is doing it in west virginia where he is the nominee for senate, his third try for the office. mr. raese is a really, really, really wealthy guy which is not so uncommon in west virginia, at least among united states senators. democrat jay rockefeller is, after all, a freaking rockefeller. think progress point to an interview that mr. raese gave a

few days ago to politics daily writer matt lewis when asked about his background in business, he was handed his politician's chance to relate to joe the coal miner and he proceeded to blow that chance totally. >> tell us a little bit about you and your business experience and how you got here. >> well, i made my money the old-fashioned way, i inherited it. i hope more people have that opportunity as we abolish inheritance tax in this country. >> an old joke about the old-fashioned way with money but from his tone i think john raese meant it. >> i made my money the old-fashioned way. i inherited it. and i think that's a great thing to do. >> he's either the most dead pan man on earth or he didn't know that is supposed to be a joke. john raese is the republican candidate for senate in west virginia.

he is the ceo by nepotism of greer industries which mostly produces steel and limestone. his grandparents started greer in 1917. a time for which mr. raese is nostalgic. that nostalgia is one of the main bases of his campaign. >> my family came here from wales in the 1880s and we've been in the steel business, banking business and several of the other businesses we've been in. my grandmother was the matriarch of our family. what she created and what she did at the turn of the century still resonates today if we would have that opportunity in this country to bring back capitalism the way my grandmother had those fruits and really enjoyed it. >> oh, yes, the good old days f. only we could go back to turn of the century capitalism, the way it used to be. at the turn of the last century the cdc, centers for disease control, celebrated what the last century has meant for people who have to work for a living. this is just the graph of americans killed annually in

mining over the decades. west virginia, right? over there on the left side with roughly 13,000 americans dying in mines in a year, more than 30 americans dying a day in just that one industry. those would be john raese's good old days. the past century has brought us all sorts of anti-capitalism stuff like mining regulations that brought the death rate of miners down to just merely horrifying from apocalyptic. it brought us rules against child labor. also brought us, you know, weekends which many americans find handy to this day. but, remember, democrats don't want to risk a national campaign in these elections by saying republicans are looking after rich people and not the middle class. remember, democrats think this year that that message might not stick. >> i made my money the old-fashioned way. i inherited it.

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quote, when major general john m. custer was the director of intelligence at u.s. central command he grew angry at how little helpful information came

out of the national counterterrorism center. in 2007 he visited its director at the time to tell him so. quote, i told him that after 4 1/2 years this organization had never produced one shred of information that helped me prosecute three wars. three wars? hold on a minute. iraq, afghanistan, and -- what's the third? that was the great catch by spencer ackerman, national security reporter at wire.com. when "the washington post" published their big expose on the giant post-9/11 intelligence bureaucracy that we don't fully understand and we fund anyway even though no one is totally sure of who it serves except itself. the national counterterrorism center has never produced one shred of information, one shred of information that helped me prosecute three wars. so says the military intelligence guy. three wars. iraq, afghanistan -- what is the third one?

here's one idea. today it's report that had we shot a missile from an aircraft southeast of a town named miranshah. yesterday another one west of the town. three people killed. another one, four people killed. we hit the same town on saturday, three to four people killed. two more missiles fired by aircraft on wednesday, 12 to 19 people killed. another four to six a week ago today. last weekend we hit that same town we hit yesterday and this weekend four to five killed then. we have shot missiles at people in pakistan 20 times in the past 23 days at least by my count from what i can figure from reports. no one really pays attention to us shooting missiles into pakistan anymore. it just gets filed into drone strikes. i know what those mean. we have ceased really worrying about them, but we've never done them at this pace before, at least as far as we can tell from what's being reported. why are we doing them so fast and furious now? is it because we have better intelligence than before so we know more about what we should

be shooting at there? does it have the fact that the pakistani government seems as inured to those drone strikes as the american government does? they have stopped their complaining about using our unmanned robot planes to shoot people in their territory even as our own country's leadership will not readily admit that we are doing that. but we have never done them at this pace before. are things happening there at such an intensity because we have better intelligence? are they doing that? does it have anything to do with the pakistani governor's take on all of this? when the pakistani government has stopped their even perfunctory complaining about this and our own country's leadership isn't admitting that we are doing this. when that isn't happening anymore we're put in a situation where we have to wonder when these things are going to become a matter of national debate. now the pakistani government has started complaining again recently. and they've done so because we've crossed another line.

today nato confirming that it is not just drones anymore. it's nato helicopters with actual pilots flying into pakistan now in combat. the first nato air strike on friday killing 49 people. the second one on saturday killing another four to six people. the associated press saying a third one today killing another ten people. to the extent that the world's attention is focused at all on pakistan is the devastating flooding. flooding that covers an area that would reach in this country from the canadian border to florida. the disaster area there is huge. the relief effort is going to last for years and cost billions. but meanwhile, quietly, america's not very secret third war rages there undeclared. joining us now is richard holbrooke the special representative. it is great to have you back on the show. >> wow. >> did i introduce stuff you can't talk about? >> i want to talk about the floods. what you said was pretty

interesting. >> let's talk about the floods first. >> thank you. thank you for showing that map. >> they are massive. >> you know, floods aren't like tsunamis and earthquakes. those happen, boom, the press moves in. stories of miraculous recoveries and rescues and then assistance. but flood in asia is an old story and we put that map together and i'm so grateful to you for putting it up because we wanted people to understand what this is. it's an area the size of italy stretching from the border to florida, 20 million people are homeless. now, i was just out there last week, now people are beginning slowly to come back to their homes but there are no homes left. they have been washed away. livestock has been destroyed. crops are gone. every bridge is out. by the way in the same area you were discussing a moment ago, there is -- there may or may not be a connection. i will leave it to you to decide whether there is or not. the bridges are all gone in that area. the flooding has washed away the roads and -- and so now we're in the early recovery phase.

hillary clinton participated in the big meeting at the u.n. last week. we're going to go to hospitals to talk about how we could get more money. it is, as you said, going to cost billions of dollars. but i do want a critical point to americans watching, the emergency phase, the phase we're still in, the u.s. is going to be first with the most. that's what we do. there are a ton of american helicopters and airplanes in the area which you didn't mention when you discussed the attack across the border. these people are well regarded all over the country. pakistanis can see that americans are there and i'm proud of that as an american. but that's in the early recovery phase and the emergency phase. this billions and billions of dollars for reconstruction for one-fifth of the country, i have said publicly and want to stress tonight, the international

community cannot pay the $10 billion, $20 billion, $40 billion, whatever it will cost. pakistanis will have to step up and take the lead here. the world bank, the u.n. system, but they have to do it themselves. >> are they capable of doing it? >> their maximum tax rates are much lower than ours. and there's a lot of tax evasion there as has been well reported. we can't ask american taxpayers to pay the burden if the pakistanis don't raise their own revenue and we've been very open about that. so i don't want to leave people with the impression we're going to pay for the reconstruction. 5,000 schools are gone. they're going to consolidate and build less. every bridge is gone. it's tough. >> in terms of the long-term commitment there obviously the united states has been looking for a way to try to do constructive development work in pakistan essentially as a means of counter insurgency as a way

of trying to empower government there. >> quite the contrary. when we took office all american assistance was in the tribal areas and it was small, the area you were talking about. hillary clinton went there. i went there. we decided to restructure our assistance so that we would focus on the bulk of the people who live in the area you just showed on that map. and we and john kerry and dick lugar and the senate and chairman burman in the house put together very well known legislation, $7.5 billion of economic assistance that started to come in. hillary went there in july and announced energy projects, water projects. now we're reorienting for this situation. but it's not -- our aid impact is not counter insurgency aid. it's aid for the people of pakistan in their own merit and as we keep trying to say to pakistanis we're not doing it because of afghanistan. we're not doing it because al qaeda's in the west. we're doing it because it is an essential thing to do. >> the carefulness of your

language, the precision of your language there, i think an important window in how delicate and complicated our relationship is with pakistan right now. do you mind holding on for a second and we'll come back? >> not at all. >> we have to make money for the general electric corporation. >> which is also working in pakistan. >> that was not meant to be a prompt. richard holbrooke is our special guest. our points from chase sapphire preferred are worth 25% more on travel. we're like forget florida, we're going on a safari. so we're on the serengeti, and seth finds a really big bone. we're talking huge. they dig it up, put it in the natural history museum and we get to name it. sethasauraus. really. your points from chase sapphire preferred are worth 25% more on travel? means better vacations. that's incredible. believe it...with chase sapphire preferred your points are worth 25% more on travel when booked through ultimate rewards.

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do you remember in the last presidential campaign all the barack hussein obama stuff? for a while i remember trying to call senator mccain senator john sydney mccain iii but it didn't have the same impact. didn't stick the same way the hussein thing did. the hussein thing is now back with a vengeance from not the usual suspects. hey, lawrence, my parents want to talk to you. oh. about what? uh, they don't really think you're an exchange student. what? they think you're a businessman, using our house to meet new clients in china.

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we're back with former ambassador richard holbrooke who is our nation's special representative for afghanistan and pakistan. mr. ambassador, thanks for sticking around. what is the legal difference between remotely piloted, unmanned planes shooting into pakistan and planes with pilots doing it? is there a legal difference? >> i'm not a lawyer but i can tell you one of those is a lot more accurate than the other. >> the piloted planes would be? >> no.

>> the drones would be? >> of course. >> why? >> because of the technologies. there was a movie a few years ago called "body of lies" which showed it rather clearly. i thought when i saw it, my god, they've been in the secret rooms. but there is a pilot but the pilot is sitting in an air force base somewhere. he's not up in the air worrying about other things. he's just focused -- he or she is just focused on the target. >> does this represent -- >> and, you know, it's such a precise weapon, the predator, that if they were aiming at your producers over there, you and i could continue the conversation. it's very, very small. does that not appeal to you that idea? >> no. it doesn't because i don't like the idea of the u.s. waging war by any other name, but we don't talk about it and, therefore, there's no accountability for it. i worry about the lawlessness. >> rachel, i have to be honest with you because i have such respect where you're coming from, we're talking about people who attacked the united states, who would do it again. we're talking about the times square bomber who went to that area of pakistan and got his training and we're talking about systems which we can't talk about which are definitely without doubt reducing the

threat to the united states and to the very spot where you and i are sitting now. and i was in vietnam. i've seen it, planes flying low, having to make judgment calls on an instant, close air support, that's where mistakes can happen and that terrible thing where they blew up the tanks and 140 people got called in the german area. none of that happens with this vehicle. >> but i worry about -- i'm not comforted by the technology because i'm worried about the justification, i'm worried about the justification of our behavior hinging on how bad we and that terrible thing where they blew up the tanks and 140 people got called in the german area. none of that happens with this vehicle. >> but i worry about -- i'm not comforted by the technology because i'm worried about the justification, i'm worried about the justification of our behavior hinging on how bad we say the people are we're doing these things to. there's no appeal after somebody has launched a missile into your home.

>> rachel, war really is hell. >> is it war in pakistan? >> you've seen it. war in the western part of pakistan? thousands and thousands of pakistanis have been killed by the pakistani taliban. thousands. those are the people who trained the times square bomber. the afghan taliban is sitting up there killing americans, attacking the indian embassy. these are really bad people. you mentioned in your opening remarks one of the headquarters of one of the groups who kills a lot of americans. if you're in a war, you can't kid yourself about it. i've seen a lot of wars. i hate them more than anything you can imagine. but in this particular case, as the president has said repeatedly, our own homeland security is directly involved. then you have the l.e.t.,

another group whose goal is to provoke a conflict between india and pakistan and who did the mumbai bombing. thousands and thousands of pakistanis have been killed by the pakistani taliban, this is the reason why this the most dangerous place on earth to stability. >> should we understand the war in afghanistan and pakistan as two separate wars. should we not consider what's happening in the pakistan to be a war. >> one of the biggest mistakes of the previous administration was to treat them separately, bureaucratically, every part of the government. the president elect obama and hillary clinton asked me to combine afghan pakistan, the pentagon followed suit, cia, white house, other governments. now we recognize the inner relationship. we treat pakistan, as i said earlier discussing the floods, as a great sovereign country, a difficult one, with its own set of problems vis-a-vis india, which i'm not involved in directly. in regard to what's happening in afghanistan, let's go back to principles. i think you and i discussed this the last time i was on your show.

there's no problem success in afghanistan unless pakistanis are part of the solution, not part of the problem. that has been one of our major focuses. and we worked very hard in trying to close the gap between the two countries. >> richard holbrooke, especially representative for pakistan and afghanistan. i could talk you all night. i'm sorry i can't go longer. i hope you'll accept an invitation to come back soon. >> i'd love to. still on the show, a time when leading republicans would not stoop to using the president's name as an accusation. that time once again is over. the return of hussein, courtesy of sarah palin let out. that's coming up plan. [ slap! slap! slap! slap! slap! ] [ male announcer ] your favorite foods fighting you? fight back fast with tums. calcium rich tums goes to work in seconds. nothing works faster. ♪ tum ta tum tum tums [ female announcer ] mousse temptations by jell-o. decadently delicious. 60 calories.

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anybody ever even bothered to ask about barack hussein obama as our president. >> barrack who? >> barrack hussein obama. >> the first time governor palin has ever used the name in public. what a difference two years makes. two years ago they denounced anyone who used mr. obama's middle name calling him barrack hussein obama to decry his secret foreignness. >> think about how you'll feel on november 5th if you wake up in the morning and see the news that barack obama, barack hussein obama is the united states of america. >> a local republican party leader speaking at a mccain/palin party in october 2008. immediately after that rally th mccain/palin group released this statement. mccain/palin campaign made no

bones about it. they called the hussein tactic off limits, even as a lot of conservatives associated with their campaign really wanted to use it. >> at some point the media will quit taking sides in this thing and maybe start covering barack haines obama, at some point going to peel the bark off barack haines obama. >> immediately after that hussein incident, mccain addressed in no uncertain terms and said he understood why they were invoking the haines name and he would not stand for it. >> it's my understanding before i came in here that a person who was on the program before i spoke made some disparaging remarks my two colleagues in the senate, senator obama and senator clinton. i have repeatedly stated my

respect for senator obama and senator clinton, that i will treat them with respect. i will call them senator. we will have respectful debate, as i have said on hundreds of occasions. i regret any comments that may be made about these two individuals who are honorable americans. >> back in 2008, the hussein tactic, using the middle name boogie man as a campaign trick to make mr. obama seem foreign, the hussein tactic earned a stern rebuke from the party's standard bearer. that had the affect of confining it to the lower common denominators, radio hosts. now using it and questioning whether or not enough is known about him, especially his childhood, whether he was vetted for the job, wink, wink, maybe something shadowy and foreign in his past.

>> i don't know why people think what they think? this is a president that we know less about than any other president in history. >> the last speaker, tim >> the last speaker, tim wahlberg, running for congress in michigan.

he said he's not demanding to see the birth certificate. note the word, i take the president at his word that he's a christian. that's how he walked it back. if that sounds familiar, senate minority leader mitch mcconnell has been saying the same thin. >> the president is a christian, i'll take him at his word. >> if you say so, i'll take you at your word. kind of hard to believe but if you say so. far reaches argued that president obama was a secret muslim manchurian, alien plant. that conspiracy theorizing came from the top, from the party standard bearers, from the mccain/palin campaign. as politics gets rough-and-tumble again as we close in on these elections, it's not surprising the hussein tactic is back in play. now the people who said, enough, we're not doing this are themselves doing it.